Life of Winnie Mandela in my words

Before she was Winnie Madikizela-Mandela, she was Nomzamo as a little girl – a Xhosa name which means ‘the one who tries.’ And she did… all her life (which ended earlier this week.)

Her teacher mother passed away when Winnie was only nine, and the family was forever split – with her siblings being ‘shared’ out among relatives, and little Winnie landing in boarding school.

Her leadership qualities shone through, and she was head girl of her secondary school; before getting a degree and becoming the first ever female social worker in South Africa at 20.

It was while Winnie was standing at a bus stop in Soweto in 1957 that Nelson Mandela first saw her, as he drove by – and he was instantly smitten! He was almost 40, she was only 22.

He offered her a lift in his car, and convinced her to meet him for lunch at an Indian restaurant the following week, where tears streamed from young Winnie’s eyes as she ate the hot curry.

Nelson was then married, with three kids, but had drifted apart from his wife Everlyn Mase.

Eva was a simple rural lass, and the more Mandela had gotten immersed in dangerous anti-apartheid politics, the more she had become religiously fanatical and detached from him.

Nelson took Winnie dancing in Jo’burg’s black jazz clubs, dated her on dinners, doted on her, taught her to drive his car, and after his divorce in 1958, formally married her.

It was the happiest they would ever be together as man and wife, with two daughters – Zenani and Zindziswa – coming along in quick succession.

But by 1960, with Winnie not quite 25, the apartheid regime was actively after her husband, which meant he spent long periods in hiding away from their marital home, often for months.

In 1963, the Boers finally caught up with their prey, and in 1964, Nelson Mandela was sentenced to life imprisonment for treason by the apartheid regime.

Think of yourself as a woman at just 27, with a husband behind bars for life, two young girls aged five and three to take care of – but with the government hounding you.

In 1969, when she was 33, Winnie was arrested and locked up at the Pretoria Central Prison for 18 months, in solitary confinement, and denied even sanitary towels during her menses.

Released in 1970, and hardened by the experience, she spent the remainder of her 30s campaigning against the evil regime, and became well known.

By 1977, she was becoming so famous as the poster girl of the anti-Botha ANC movement in South Africa that the Boers decided to banish her to Brandfort, a drab and dusty rural hamlet in the middle of nowhere.

Separated from her girls (sneaked to Swaziland for education) and her husband (still in prison on Robben Island), those seven Biblical years of exile embittered Winnie in her 40s.

When she was released, she had morphed from martyr-wife-of-Mandela to Winnie the Firebrand. ‘With our tyres, and necklaces (of fire),’ she said, ‘we will liberate this South Africa.’

This was in reference to lynching ‘traitors’ to the ANC, done by her vigilante militia ‘The Mandela Football Club,’ and landed her in trouble when a 14-year-old called Stompie was slaughtered in 1988.

In 1990, Mandela was released from prison, but by then, after 27 years of vastly different experiences, they were very different people at 72 and 54 respectively.

In 1991, Nelson found out that Winnie had a 30-year-old lover called Dali Mpofu, a young lawyer who had been on her case (both legally and otherwise) since the ‘Stompie’ affair in 1988. She had also overpaid his fees by USD50,000 (Sh5 million), withdrawn from ANC accounts.

The Mandelas separated in 1992, with their divorce going through in 1996, by which time Winnie was an assistant minister in Mandela’s first and only government – and Nelson was meeting up with Graça Machel (widow of the Mozambican president) – who would become his third and last wife.

Ironically, Nelson and Graça met up at the wedding of 72-year-old Robert Mugabe to his 31-year-old secretary, Grace.